Award-winning news, views, and insight from the ESET security community

Fan Check Checks In Again?

PC World has reported that Janakan Arulkumarasan, the creator of Fan Check says it’s non-viral, safe and legitimate, in an interview with IDG News Service. The article quotes him as saying: “FanCheck is NOT a malicious app. Unfortunately, some malicious developers have been spreading a lie that it is — and encouraging people to download fake

PC World has reported that Janakan Arulkumarasan, the creator of Fan Check says it’s non-viral, safe and legitimate, in an interview with IDG News Service. The article quotes him as saying: “FanCheck is NOT a malicious app. Unfortunately, some malicious developers have been spreading a lie that it is — and encouraging people to download fake

PC World has reported that Janakan Arulkumarasan, the creator of Fan Check says it’s non-viral, safe and legitimate, in an interview with IDG News Service.

The article quotes him as saying:

“FanCheck is NOT a malicious app. Unfortunately, some malicious developers have been spreading a lie that it is — and encouraging people to download fake virus scanning software, which damages their computer. This is very unfortunate, but it has nothing to do with us.”

It also quotes a Facebook spokesman as saying that Facebook has reviewed the application and found that it didn’t contain malware. However, there seems to be quite a wave of user discontent with it:, with complaints that FanCheck disrupts Facebook profiles and PC systems: the developer contends that the only effect it could have on a PC is as a result of the requirement that it needed Adobe Flash installed, though this requirement has apparently been modified now.

It seems that Facebook has not yet reviewed the way in which notifications have been sent: hopefully when they do so, they’ll determine whether the anomalies that some people have reported are due to Fan Check, and whether further action needs to be taken.

Arulkumarasan has admitted, according to PC World, that he’s not a “very experienced programmer”: whether the curious effects that some FB users have noted are accounted for by a bug in the code remains to be established.